My accepted offer has been rescinded after 48 hours! Gutted!

[Cakeisbest]

I offered above the asking price on a house, and was delighted to be accepted. While I have been rounding up the documents requested by the agent over the last day and a half, the agent rang to tell me the vendor has got fed up waiting and has gone with a different buyer. Neither the agent or the vendor told me that time was of the utmost urgency to get the documents across to them, and really, a day and half! I do have to do some work for my employer! At the end of the second day I now have the documents so I'm going to send them anyway - can't do any harm, can it? Any other advice?

Yes - send them in case the next buyer does the same thing then you are ready to go.

Sounds like an excuse. The other buyer may have offered more 🙁

I think you have dodged a bullet if that’s is genuinely why they went with another buyer.

It’s certainly that they’ve had a higher offer.

You don’t want to buy a house from these people. Conveyancing takes months in many cases. Any seller behaving this way is not upset that they didn’t receive a bit of paperwork immediately.

Lol whut.

Frustrating but you've dodged a bullet.

What was it proof of funds? That shouldn’t take two days to be fair.

I had my offer accepted half an hour before the estate agents closed on Friday. By mid morning Saturday, I'd had 2 emails and a phone call demanding my proof of funds ect.

It generally doesn’t take much effort to ‘track down’ proof of funds though.

An agreement in principle is pretty easy to get. As is a bank statement.

In my experience, estate agents ask for this stuff with the offer.

As a seller, they tend to relay offers with information about the financial viability of the offers as part of it.

Higher offer. Excuse to accept it. Sorry.

Agree with everyone else that they have had a higher offer.

Personally, though, I would never have accepted your offer in the first place without proof of funds.

Just sold a property the estate agent asked for proof of funds which were in place before they contacted me with the offer. It's a new one on me too

They've just had a higher offer and ratted. I don't think they are very nice vendors, they'd probably do the same at any stage if someone waved more money at them. Id look for another place, but if you still like it a lot, leave your offer on the table but be clear you're also looking elsewhere.

If they didn’t have a higher offer they would have been more patient with you.

Thanks everyone. With hindsight, I can see they would want proof of funds pretty darn quick to back up my word. There was no chase up though, just the call to say too slow, gone with someone else. You snooze, you lose, I guess. I suspect another interested party upped their offer beating mine. I'll definitely be quicker off the line next time. I have emailed to say Ive got it all now, couldn't just leave it.

If they didn’t check your affordability and didn’t ask for a higher bid, the EA will be buying it themselves or selling to a mate.

Quite possible unfortunately. We lost a house to an agents "investor friend" once, couldn't do anything about it though 😕

I don’t know. Whenever we’ve offered on a house we have everything we need to hand and send it across immediately. I can’t imagine waiting two days to send something across that’s relatively straight forward to do.

We were sending proof of funds with the offer or showing agreement in principle to book a viewing.
However I also think that it was an excuse in your situation because they’ve got higher offer or a different offer e.g from someone who’d sell their property through them. EAs prefer this as it will get them 2 commissions at once.

I’m not sure either, proof of funds is required fairly immediately. I’d have assumed a higher offer yes, but I’d not be focusing on its some form of ea scam. People always seem to think ea’s and their mates are buying all the houses, when actually that’s very rare, they are seldom property magnates.

I agree, they will probably just have had a higher offer come in or possibly the same offer but from buyers who seemed more organised and ready to go.

They probably thought that if you were faffing with what is a very basic requirement, you'd faff through the whole process and slow it down. Or you gave the impression of a less-than-serious buyer.

We sent everything required as soon as possible to whoever needed them (our broker actually thanked us for being on the ball and making his job so much easier).

Finding this interesting reading. I’m in early stages of selling and buying through the same agent. I had three “best and final” offers on my house and once I’d accepted one of them it took almost two weeks to issue the memorandum of sale as we were waiting for the buyer to provide proof of funds.

On the other hand the only proof of funds I’ve provided for my onward purchase is the agents being aware of the price I’m selling for. They know I need a mortgage and they don’t know for sure how much equity I have or intend to contribute - they asked me to tell them but no evidence of anything was asked of me.

I suppose it's individual tolerance in relation to how long they want to wait, @ibelieveinmirrorballs. I'm very organised and provide stuff ASAP. I have very low tolerance for less-organised people (which I know is a me problem!). Maybe the sellers were 'Fluffy' in nature!

It is interesting to hear the different tolerances for initial documentation, and makes me feel a bit better to not beat myself up too much. Maybe this agent's style is that if you don't get the documents over quick and there's another interested party (there was) they see if they want to offer again. In that scenario there's no need for the agent to spend time chasing me up, they just go with someone else.